In a startling development this month, the Egyptian Judges Club decided to boycott their constitutionally mandated role of supervising upcoming elections.

Is the Egyptian judiciary on a quest to transform Mubarak's regime? In a new Carnegie Endowment Policy Outlook, Arab constitutionalism expert Nathan Brown and Egyptian Judge Hesham Nasr argue that rather than a bold move toward regime change, this is a calibrated confrontation with narrower aims: to secure judicial reform and support electoral reform. Brown and Nasr predict that the likely outcome of this standoff will be a series of regime concessions that, while limited, may nonetheless have significant long-term effects on opening a closed political system.